About Zen(Chan)
Great Mathematician S.S.Chern & Lao Tzu
Chapter III Buddhism, Christianity & Lao Tzu
Faith, conscience, good conducts and thought are the wealth of the wise, who ascends to the heavenly realm. (Dharmapada)
Religion, in particular, should not be a substitude for dreams and wish fulfillment; it should resemble neither the holding of a ticket in a lottery, nor the holding of a policy of an insurance company. The historicist element in religion is an element of idolatry, of superstition. (Karl Popper: The Open Society And Its Enemies)
III.1 Religion and Philosophy
Problems instigated by Plato in his books still sets tone for philosophical discussions until this day. His greatest inspiration to wisdom seekers is contained in his dialogues on epistemology-the theory of knowledge. Interestingly, however, at the end of his discussion he concluded that knowledge is reminiscence; knowledge is recollection. Plato further conjectured that the soul therefore must have existence before birth. Following his theory of immortality, he described that through our reason we found out that our body is the source of endless trouble to us; our desire for food, love of body(lusts), disease, fancy and endless foolery. Plato also talked about reincarnations. He said that in death body ends yet not the mind. His argument is very similar to the reason Buddha gave to persuade people that our life geared for illusory physical existence, which is in eternally but illusory creation of our fallible senses. Bertrand Russell, who is prima facie not religious and was particularly against organized religions, has written in depth about the relationship between theology and philosophy in the West. His deep thoughts are set forth as follows:
The conceptions of life and the world which we call `philosophical' are product of two factors: one, inherited religious and ethical conceptions; the other, the sort of investigation which may be called "scientific", using this word in the broadest sense.
In plain words, it is not uncommon for us to be enthralled by questions like "What am I?", "What am I doing here?", "Where did I come from?", "Where am I going to afterwards?", and "What is the significance of my sense and sensibilities, my relationship with other selves, Earth, Universe, and the inconceivably huge galaxy?" Finally it comes down to "What am I doing(sensing acting and thinking) here?" For inquisitive people, like philosophers Descartes and Nietzsche, even the most profound answers offered by theologians were not absolutely opportune to their questions. They therefore wanted to instigate further and more comprehensive investigations. Since the dawn of civilization, human beings everywhere. have been constantly hounded by those questions about existence
Nowadays, the traditional philosophy is undergoing revolution; this profession is moving towards the supposedly more tangible philosophical analysis of our deeply imbedded linguistic intuitions, and claiming owe this to the suggestion of Ludwig Wittgenstein(1889-1952). Nevertheless, this revolution consisted of mainly English speaking people, and it seems have neglected and suppressed the concern very close to Wittgenstein's heart. He claimed, "Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. Then he echoes Plato's discussion on mind by saying "Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits". The conclusion he then drew for the problems which had occupied much of his thought sounds ill-starred, "Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time." If death enables one to transgress the limit of time-space, then the riddle of the present life lies beyond the real world? By the same token, our never-ending quest for Truth is also doomed: no matter how hard have we tried, achievements, progress, and breakthroughs in human knowledge are not significantly related to the eternal Truth? The inevitable conclusion one might likely arrive at is: one may reach the eternal Truth if and only if one can go beyond one's spatial-temporal span of life. He does not articulate that the to each individual the realm prior to birth and after death are one and the same. He does lead one to believe that human existence, as laced by sufferings, is but a shadow between life and death. On the other hand, according to Plato, it is our mind which could touch eternity temporarily while trapped in the spatial-temporal bound physical body.
Some discussion the philosopher-poet T.S.Eliot has made on this matter may help us to understand our anxiety about life and death. In Bernard Bergonzi's book T.S. Eliot it opens as follows:
Towards the end of T.S. Eliot's life, a friend asked him if he could say more about lines from "Little Gidding":
`They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of
the living.'
Eliot replied that we cannot fully understand a person's life, and grasp the totality of his being, until he is dead: once he is dead, the acts of his life fall into their proper perceptive and we can see what he was tending forward.
Lao Tzu had also concluded, after having lived more than eight decades, that each of us could prolong life far beyond death. through executing good deeds and propagating(spreading) one's kindness, because we came out of somewhere unknown(nothingness) and will go back into this obscure unknown realm as well. Life is a riddle and it did not quite begin with birth, nor may it end with death. Nevertheless one touches eternity retroactively through learning about his roots. Buddha also described mundane life is but ill-fated mirage, wherein souls were caught in the [vicious] circle of recurrences. Furthermore, Buddha had successfully convinced a very large part of our populace that either doing good or soul-searching in a person's life-time are definitely moving him forward to the absolute eternity.
Ever since human beings acknowledged the drastic difference between life and death, religions of different profundities, have guided human lives, in search for the riddle and the meaning of our present and eternal lives, while only a few people have found reading philosophy gratifying. Even until this day of space exploration, human beings are still deeply fascinated by the touch of out-of-worldly angels, or space vessels picking up lost souls travelling to a better kingdom. Religions have been with us much longer, and more broadly, than philosophies. It was, from this medium and extremely ancient age of religions, rudimentary Chinese philosophies had been conceived. In my other paper, under the heading "Lao Tzu's Historical and Ideological Backgrounds", traditional ancient Chinese's religious conceptions has been extensively discussed. Naturally, Lao Tzu's religious thought was germinated from this growing ground. Nevertheless, he separated himself from his peers, like Hellenic philosophers distinguished themseves from others, through developing a rudimentarily systematic philosophy. Philosophy(love of wisdom) is based on human inquisitiveness, its aim is questing truth through steering away from arbitrariness by means of reason in the face of abounding human imaginations.
Unfortunately, under the intensive drive to pursue more profound knowledge, philosophers did make mistakes of making nonsensical metaphysical statements. Philosopher A.J.Ayer says that even though metaphysican does not intend to write nonsense or about artistically mystical feelings like poets, yet "He lapsed into it through being deceived by grammar, or through committing errors of reasoning." He then concludes:
There remain a number of metaphysical passages which are the work of genuine mystical feeling; and they may plausibly be held to have moral or aesthetic value. -
Lao Tzu's contribution to religious thought lies in his high-minded ethics and his predication that there is a way we can co-exist happily together. Nevertheless, he did not develop any outlandish metaphysical systems as theologians and some philosophers. Even though it was very important in his teaching to be kind and benevolent, yet he had never offered any enticement, such as going to Heaven or living(reincarnating for) a better life next time around.
The fact that both theoreticians of Buddhism and Christianity have found Lao Tzu's thoughts agreeable was not accidental. Early Buddhist scholars in China found Lao Tzu's thought a fertile medium for the rooting of their religion in China. Many of the translation of their key words were evidently borrowed from Lao Tzu, e.g. "tao" and "wu yue". After Buddhism had obtained a stronghold in the Chinese culture, many Chinese interpreters of Lao Tzu, impressed by the bold and comprehensive cosmology articulated in Buddhism, found it providing a convenient framework to expound Lao Tzu's overall thoughts. And reciprocatively the language in his book provided many ready-to-use words to translate Buddha's teachings. For many centuries Chinese ordinarily employed the term Fu Lao to refer to philosophies of Buddha-Lao Tzu in depth. For more than two thousand years the term "Huang-Lao", which was originally used to refer to the intrinsically powerful thoughts of Huang-ti and Lao Tzu combined, has also been used frequently. Commonly shared opinion among Chinese is that the sound understanding of Lao Tzu may facilitate a person's comprehension of Ch'an(Zen) Buddhism. On the other hand, Westerners with either solid theological or philosophical training seemed have come up with acute insight of the original thought of Lao Tzu, evidenced by their commentaries in English presented henceforth in this paragraph. Many Christian scholars are convinced that his discussions amazingly paraphrased that of The New Testament.
Philosopher Paul Carus points out, "the first translation that was made of the Tao-Teh-King by Western scholars in Latin. It was made by the Roman Catholic missionaries." Like religious texts, the tone of this book is inspirational and solacing, alleviating its readers from the uncomfortable feeling of being caged in cheapened existence. Like religious leaders Lao Tzu also voiced his yearning to ascend to a soaring nobility. Unlike Confucianism, there is no direct conflict between Lao Tzu's philosophy and religious dictums in general. Where Lao Tzu stopped short, at what he deemed that the metaphysical speculation had gone far enough, Buddhism and Christianity were ready to pick up, in their opinion, "the loose ends he had left-off". Socially, Confucianism encouraged the adherence to traditional Chinese rituals of ancestral whorship, which is originated from ceremonial glorification of Heaven worship. Buddhist followers could easily dismiss its religious significance, as Confucianism meant to be nothing otherworldly. But for Vatican this ceremony for propriety rituals signifies both paganism and idolatry. It is hence deemed intolerable. Consequently, after having enjoyed two centuries of friendly reception, Catholic priests in China were caught in a conflict which was far more social-political than ethereal, i.e. religious or spiritual. The clash culminated, when Chinese emperors banished the Catholic Church completely from the Empire in the eighteenth century, as the Church demanded its followers' to renounce the traditional Chinese memorization of ancestor. The only retuals allowed were the Church's regimented symbolism and ceremonies. However, this policy was inconsistently carried out elsewhere: earlier in Europe and later in South America, many local pagan practices have been integrated and observed in this religious practice until this day. In this chapter, however, the discussion is focused on the agreement between Lao Tzu's ethics, i.e. kindness(mercifulness) and humility, and Christian ethics. When comes to Buddhism it is about the relevance of Ch'an(Zen) Buddhism, which was converging point of Lao Tzu's Taoism and Buddhism. The prima facie meaning of it is "meditation", and it was meant to be a skill employed by Lao Tzu to fathom the profound Truth of the world in three phases: physical, human, and psychological.
III.2 The Orientation of Zen(Chan) Buddhism
The word ch'an(Zen) is a very old Chinese character; it could be coined more than four thousand years ago. When it was combined with the other character wei(position) they form the word ch'an wei referring to the selfless no-string-attached clean-cut transference of supreme political power to another person. It particularly applies to the situation the heir to the throne was chosen by virtue of his excellence and integrity, even though he was not related by blood to his predecessor. In other words, he earned the position through being a good, wise and knowledgeable man rather than having been born a prince. Confucius and Mencius raved so much about this practice. According to them ch*an wei took place twice between the twenty-third and the twenty-second centuries BCE, when China was emerging into a prototype feudal nation. Linguistically, ch*an is itself the combination of two characters: one means ceremony and the other means single. The thus formed character means "to clear up and clean-up; to sweep clean before graveside memorial service" This etymological analysis is important in understanding the Ch'an(Zen) practiced by Chinese Buddhists. Its original meaning already embodies elements of Serenity(ching), emptiness and single-mindedness.
Meditation might have had been practiced even before morphology was developed in human speech. Before a full-fledged language was developed, our ancestors had to exert extremely hard to bring up to the surface(consciousness) the eruption of their private (unconscious and subconscious) thoughts with limited verbal expression (representation). A better thinker could do a better job to crystallize his thought with appropriate symbolism. Meditation was an obtained skill of focusing. It is free from any passionate or behavioral involvement; it is free from substance stimulation; it is not divination; it is not an environment for imaginative creation; it must be free from megalomania. It is, however, a state of conscious sereneness to one's true self. Ch'an(Zen) Buddhism was originated in China, and many people attributed it to Lao Tzu*s influence. Unlike Buddhism, however, Lao Tzu had realistically steered away from turgid metaphysical speculations, he did not speculate about after-life or spiritual world either. His starting and finishing points are in this very world, even if he was not as practical as Confucius was. Moreover he went further than being naively realistic by discovering the theoretical nature of our descriptions of Nature. Unlike Buddha, or other religious leaders, he did not believe that any of our descriptions(theories) could lay the last claim of the mystery of Nature. His metaphysics could be retroactively explained in terms of his observation how things work in the physical world; in other words, it is a meta-physics of the physics he managed to learn at his time.
When comes to religious ideas, for Lao Tzu, however, the more basic problem about human existence was our understanding about life and death. He said:
Birth is the movement of coming out [of the obscurity to join the world];
Death is the movement of going in [to the obscurity from this world];
For every ten people [of the existing population], three more new-born will join them;
The last of the above statement implies that everyone has only limited time-span, so everyone has to go eventually in order to make room for new comers. Therefore each individual is, equally, a part of Nature; each one could enhances his own existence through questing for Truth and his true self(soul?). Furthermore, the more one could penetrate the apparent appearance(phenomenon), the more one could fathom the deep mystery of Nature.
Notwithstanding, when comes to ethics, Lao Tzu, comparing to Confucius, was much more an idealist. Confucius* ethics was on the whole approachable by ordinary folks, whereas Lao Tzu*s ethics was so strict and aloft, only a selected few can satisfy his standard. It sounds like he was pushing everyone to the edge by demanding everyone to be as brilliant and hard-working as Einstein. Therefore he asked intelligent people to aim at being the noblest of the most virtuous human beings. Confucius never forgot that to be human one cannot avoid being fallible and incorrigible. When B.Russell was in China, he discovered Lao Tzu and raved about his upholding the following high-minded ethical standard: He particularly admired Lao Tzu*s for articulating the following principles:
[A Sage] helps [creatures] to relish their lives without being possessive;
[He] carries out good deeds without asserting his authority;
[He] does not claim his merit after each success;
To people of the world, it is the ethics for Gods and angels; this standard is, at most, suitable for a different world and for different class of people, namely Saints and Sages. Practical Confucius recognized, on the other hand, food and sex were predominant factors of human nature. Accordingly, would the ethics which addresses to heavenly human ideals at the cost of ignoring earthly human needs be upheld properly by us humans who tend to measure value in accordance with pains and pleasures? Because Lao Tzu was so high-minded, his thoughts are still anti-current until this day, even when our technology is so idealistically advanced that we could land on the Moon.
Note: Zen (the Japanese pronouciation) = Chan(the modern Chinese spelling) =Ch'an(old fashion Wade-Giles spelling)Please go to the following site and read pages 22-35 of the book for further details:
The reciprocal Chinese Web Page is:
